Made the Final Fifty of the New2TheScene Novel Award 2025
In 16th-century Glasgow. A couple divided by belief try to save one another, and their marriage, as persecution, poverty, and witch-fear consume their community.
Jonet married Thomas the day after they burned Nell Bowie. Auspicious, the minister called it, his robes still smelling of pyre. She’d never heard the word before but took it for a blessing. Now, three years gone, every meal harder earned, and still no bairn, she’d begun to wonder.
They weren’t the only ones struggling, what with the failed harvests of ’96 sending prices soaring, and every spare body to the queue of labour for hire. Witches they said. These days the minister preached on little else. The word was, King James himself had taken up his quill.
Jonet believes in the word of Church and King. Tom is sceptical. They manage their difference by never speaking of it. But with the witch-hysteria rising around them, their peace can’t last. One day Jonet is assaulted by a powerful businessman, and in the confrontation that follows, she thinks his wife curses them. Over time she knows it, for how else could she explain the bad luck that follows. Yet still Tom won’t hear a word of it. With her life spiralling, her husband barely speaking to her, and a minister all too ready to offer a sympathetic ear, a final tragedy brings Jonet to a choice. One that changes everything.
Inspired by the important work of Scottish Charitable Organisation; Remembering the Accused Witches of Scotland (RAWS).
Quotes from The Peat Cutter’s Wife:
Different but suited, they were. If a hare crossed their path, he’d think of pottage, while she’d make the sign-o’-the-cross.
Every part of her, every heartbeat, every thought had been his from the moment they met. The lad who delivered peat, teasing a girl he found kneeling in a herb patch with her hands and skirts caked in dirt.
He stretched his arms around her, guided her hands. ‘Now lean forward, slow… wait… feel… when the peat is ready it will pull, not push. You know it, for doesn’t it pull your feet when you walk?’ Miraculously, the blade slid deep into the ground, all the way in. No effort needed, just a guiding hand.
The only thing between a witch and an innocent woman is the word of men. And I don’t trust them so much as you do.
They came for the spectacle, for the judgement, to be part of a story, for catharsis, for satisfaction. But not for God
And all the time I tried to talk to her, in my mind like – for wasn’t she supposed to be a witch? Couldn’t she hear my thoughts? – I kept telling her, “Save yourself. Make them stop. Fly away.” But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t, Jonet. You know why? Because she was no more a witch than you or me. Then of course they burnt her. And Minister Cowper can say what he wants, ma jo, there’s nothing holy about that.
‘We have twenty-four heads in the cells and each of those twenty-four has, I understand, begun naming others. If this new – more thorough – method of prosecution slows down processing, we will run out of cell-space, probably by the end of next week.’
It would be better to convict an innocent woman, than to defy the word of God… …I have to object! That’s not a juridically recognised standard of proof.
Dragged, carried, dazed on their feet, or broken on the ground… one way or another, they came. An ancient woman of eighty years, a girl of fourteen, and every age between. A poultry seller, a healer, a seller of trinkets, a midwife, a maid, a laundress, two wet nurses, three itinerant beggars, a widow, a wife, a sister, a daughter. They came to receive their judgement. Not before God. Not even before The Great Witch of Balwearie. But before the men who used their names. The King’s justice.
What would they run out of first? Women or fuel for the pyres?
The calling of names went on, and she understood, each woman called out her own name. Declaring. ‘I’m here… I’m still here.’ Like sheep on a hillside without a shepherd to count for them.
Only a witch would have imperfections that didn’t bleed naturally. How does one bleed naturally?
Everyone answers. In the end.